This portrait—one of Vigée Le Brun's finest—shows Emmanuel de Crussol at the height of his career, two years before the outbreak of the Revolution. He wears the blue sash and collar of the order of the Saint-Esprit and the Maltese cross of the order of the Knights of Malta.

Crussol entered the service of the comte d'Artois (the future Charles X) in 1773. During the Revolution he fought for the Royalist cause and after the restoration of the monarchy was elevated to the peerage in 1814 by Louis XVIII.

Emmanuel de Crussol-Florensac belonged to the ancient family of the Crussols, ducs d’Uzès, but to a junior branch of which the last survivor was his brother, Henri Charles, baron de Crussol (died 1818). Emmanuel joined the army in 1761 and fought in Germany during the Seven Years’ War. In 1773 he was appointed captain of the guard to the comte d’Artois (1757–1836), grandson of Louis XV and a future king as Charles X. Crussol-Florensac was named maréchal-de-camp in 1784 by Louis XVI, who awarded him the order of the Saint-Esprit. He was also a bailli, or bailiff, of the order of the Knights of Malta, an administrative and quasi-religious role with an obligation of celibacy. Nevertheless he enjoyed a long-term relationship with Charlotte Eustache Sophie de Fuligny Damas (ca. 1742–1828), marquise de Grollier, who was a still-life painter and a friend of Madame Vigée Le Brun and sat to her for a portrait of the same size on panel.

In her memoirs, Vigée Le Brun stated that she had painted the marquise and the bailli three times, in 1788, in 1789, and after her return to France. In the first two cases only the names of the sitters are listed, one after the other, but in the third there are descriptions: ‘La marquise de Grollier, peignant des fleurs" and "Le bailli de Crussol. Grand buste."

These descriptions fit the surviving portraits. The portrait of the bailli is signed and dated 1787, and if there were others, they must have been later replicas.

The bailli de Crussol wears a gold-embroidered black coat with the eight-point cross of the order of the Saint-Esprit in white, and a black ribbon with an enameled cross of the same design. Over the sash of the order is the collar, meticulously depicted, from which the cross with the dove is suspended. His expressive head, confident and engaged, is set off by a white neck band and a wide fall of lace. Apparently he wears his own reddish-blond hair, thickly powdered.

W. H. Helm. Vigée-Lebrun, 1755–1842: Her Life, Works, and Friendships. London, 1915, p. 193, claims the present work was almost certainly the portrait of Crussol painted in 1788 or 1789, for which Madame Lebrun received the hundred louis to start for Italy in October 1789.

Charles Sterling. "XV–XVIII Centuries." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of French Paintings. 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1955, pp. 188–90, ill., notes that in her "Souvenirs", Vigée mentions painting three portraits of the Bailli from 1788, 1789, and after the Revolution; states that ours, clearly dated 1787, is evidently a fourth.

Joseph Baillio. Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1755–1842. Exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum. Fort Worth, 1982, pp. 5, 76–78, ill., claims that this picture and Vigée's portrait of the sitter's companion, the marquise de Grollier (collection of comte Jean-François de Roussy de Sales, Château de Thorens, Thorens-Glières), also on panel and about the same height, "can be considered pendants"; states that the marquise owned both portraits.

Kathleen Nicholson inThe Dictionary of Art. 32, New York, 1996, p. 495, as an example of the intensity and directness of Vigée's portraits of men, by comparison with the affectation found in many of her portraits of women.